Index

The Federal Chancellor is the only member of the Federal Government to be elected. The constitution empowers him to personally choose his ministers, who head the most important political authorities. Moreover it is the Chancellor who determines the number of ministries and their responsibilities. It is he who lays down the guidelines of government policy. These outline the Chancellor’s right to stipulate binding government activities. This authority gives the Federal Chancellor a whole array of instruments of leadership that easily stands up to a comparison with the power of the President in a presidential democracy.
 
The Parliamentary Council, which in 1949 resolved the Basic Law, took as its role model for the Federal Chancellor the position of the Prime Minister in Great Britain. The Prime Minister possesses exactly the same means of power as that of Chancellor, though the latter’s power is actually far less than that of the British premier. In the British parliamentary system only one party is ever in power, because the first-past-the-post system there favors the strongest party. As a rule, in the Bundestag no one party has a clear majority. For this reason a coalition is normally necessary to be able to elect a Chancellor.
 
The election of the Chancellor is preceded by extensive negotiations between those parties that plan to govern together. These address specific topics such as how the ministries are to be divided up between the parties, which ministries are to be maintained and which newly created. The strongest party in the alliance is accorded the right to propose the Federal Chancellor. In addition the parties agree on the policies they intend to tackle in the next few years. The results of these coalition negotiations are enshrined in the coalition treaty. Only when these steps have been completed is the Chancellor elected. Negotiations between the government parties prepare the decisions taken by the Federal Government and accompany them afterwards. Should there no longer be political consensus between the parties before general elections for a new Bundestag are due, removing the Chancellor from office becomes an alternative. Should a constructive vote of no confidence result in the current Chancellor indeed being removed from office, a new Chancellor must be elected at the same time. This repeal of parliamentary confidence forces the parties represented in the Bundestag to form a new, functioning government majority before they bring down the Chancellor. There have only been two previous attempts to bring down the Chancellor, only one of which succeeded, namely in 1982 when a vote of no confidence was passed against the Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (SPD), who was replaced by Helmut Kohl (CDU).
 
However, at any time the Federal Chancellor himself can also propose a vote of no confidence in the Bundestag to test whether he still enjoys the unlimited support of the governing parties. Should the Chancellor lose the vote this indicates that parts of the government majority are drifting away from the Chancellor, leaving the Federal President to decide whether the Bundestag should be dissolved and a general election held. The Federal President can also request the parties represented in the Bundestag to try and form a new government.
 
In the history of the Federal Republic there has never been a genuine defeat in a vote of no confidence. There have on three occasions been previously arranged defeats: The elected representatives of the government parties or the ministers abstained in order to bring down the government in 1972, 1982, and 2005. This course of action was taken in order to prematurely dissolve the Bundestag, which according to the constitution is otherwise not possible. It can only be taken with the approval of the Federal President and is legally not uncontroversial.

The Federal President is the head of state of the Federal Republic of Germany. He represents the country in its dealings with other countries and appoints government members, judges and high-ranking civil servants. With his signature, acts become legally binding. He can dismiss the government and, in exceptional cases, dissolve parliament before its term of office is completed. The Basic Law does not accord the Federal President a right of veto such as is held by the President of the United States and other state presidents. Though the Federal President confirms parliamentary decisions and government proposals with regard to ministers, he only checks whether they have come about by the due procedure in accordance with the Basic Law.
 
The Federal President remains in office for a period of five years; he can be re-elected only once. He is elected by the Federal Convention, which is made up of members of the Bundestag, on the one hand, and by an equal number of members selected by parliaments of the 16 federal states, on the other.

The Basic Law determines that Germany is a constitutional state: All state authorities are subject to judicial control. Section 1 of the Basic Law is of particular relevance. It stipulates that respect for human dignity is the most important aspect of the constitution: “Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.” Among other things, the other basic rights guarantee the freedom to act within the law, equality before the law, freedom of the press and media, freedom of association and protection of the family.
 
In determining that it is the people who exercise power through special bodies, the Basic Law lays down representative democracy as the form of rulership. Furthermore, it determines that Germany is a constitutional state: All state authorities are subject to judicial control. Another principle of the constitution is that Germany is a federal state, in other words the ruling authorities are divided up into a number of member states and the central state. In conclusion, the Basic Law defines Germany as a welfare state. The welfare state requires the political system to take precautions such that people are guaranteed a decent standard of material well-being in case of unemployment, disability, illness and in old age. One particular feature of the Basic Law is the so-called “eternal character” of these governing constitutional principles. Subsequent alterations to the Basic Law or a completely new constitution cannot encroach on the basic rights, the democratization of sovereignty, the federal state and the welfare state.
 
 

The Bundesrat represents the federal states and alongside the Bundestag is a form of Second Chamber. It is obliged to deliberate on each federal law. As the chamber of the federal states, the Bundesrat has the same function as those Second Chambers in other federal states that are mostly referred to as the Senate. The Bundesrat is made up exclusively of representatives of the federal state governments. The number of votes each state holds is aligned in a sense to the size of its population: Each state has at least three, and those with the highest populations up to six.
 
The Bundesrat plays a part in the passing of federal legislation. Here, it differs from the Second Chamber of other federal states. The Basic Law envisages two forms of participation. Central laws that cause the federal states additional administrative costs or replace existing central laws require the approval of the Bundesrat: The latter is required to endorse laws passed by the Bundestag for these to become legally binding. In this regard, the Bundesrat enjoys the same rights as the Bundestag in terms of being a legislative organ. Currently almost 50 percent of all laws passed require the approval of the Bundesrat. Since federal laws are in principle enforced by the administrative bodies of the federal states, the most important and most costly laws involve the administrative sovereignty of the federal states. A difference should be made between these approval laws and the appeal laws. Though the Bundesrat can reject the latter, the Bundestag can overrule the objection with the same majority as in the Bundesrat, with a simple or two-thirds majority, in the event of the latter with at least the majority of the members of the Bundestag (absolute majority).
 
Since September 2006, the reform of the federal system has recalibrated the respective scope of central government and of the individual federal states. The goal of the reform: to improve the decision-making abilities and scope for action of both central government and the federal state governments, and to more clearly assign political responsibilities.

The Bundestag is made up of the elected representatives of the German people. In principle elections to the Bundestag are proportionally representative, with each party’s share of the vote in the election reflecting the number of seats it occupies in the parliament. But the electoral system also contains elements of majority voting: citizens cast a first vote for a candidate in a constituency and a second vote for a party’s state list. The Bundestag normally has 598 members by law, but this number has recently been significantly higher due to a system of so-called “overhang mandates” and “balancing mandates”. The plan is to amend the law to change this system, thereby ensuring that the number of parliamentarians is limited in future. One requirement for entry into parliament is the so-called five per cent hurdle: parties only sit in parliament if they win at least five per cent of the national vote.
 
The Bundestag is the German parliament. Its elected representatives are organized in parliamentary parties and select a President from among them. It is the function of the Bundestag to elect the Federal Chancellor and keep him in office through support for his policies. The members of parliament can relieve the Chancellor of his duties by denying him their confidence, as do other parliaments. Nor does it make any great difference that in Germany the Chancellor is elected, whereas in Great Britain and other parliamentary democracies he is appointed by the head of state. In other parliamentary democracies, a party leader who can rely on a parliamentary majority is always appointed head of government.

The second major function of the elected representatives in the Bundestag is to pass legislation. Here, again, the Bundestag is similar to parliaments in other parliamentary democracies in that it for the most part enacts bills proposed by the Federal Government. The Bundestag however, which resides in the Reichstag building in Berlin, is less like the debating parliament typified by British parliamentary culture and corresponds far more closely to the US type of so-called working parliament. The Bundestag’s expert parliamentary committees discuss the bills introduced to Parliament in detail.
 
The Bundestag’s expert Parliamentary Committees discuss the bills introduced to Parliament in great detail. Here, the activities of the Bundestag resemble to some extent Congress in the USA, the prototype of a working parliament. The third major function of the Bundestag is to keep a check on the government’s work. It is the opposition that fulfills the function of monitoring the work of government in a manner visible to the general public. A less evident, but no less effective form of control is carried out by the members of parliament of the governing parties, who behind closed doors ask the government representatives critical questions.

The Federal Constitutional Court is a characteristic institution of post-war German democracy. The Basic Law accorded it the right to repeal legislation passed as part of the legitimate democratic process should it come to the conclusion that such legislation contravenes the Basic Law. The Constitutional Court acts only when appealed to. Those entitled to lodge a complaint include the federal bodies Federal President, Bundestag, Bundesrat, Federal Government and their constituent parts – elected representatives or parliamentary parties – as well as federal state governments. In “constitution-related” disputes, the Constitutional Court acts to protect the division of powers guaranteed in the Basic Law and the federal state. In order to enable parliamentary minorities to be able to appeal to the Constitutional Court, one third of the elected representatives of the Bundestag is sufficient to submit a complaint against a valid law (“abstract judicial review”).
 
Furthermore, the Basic Law empowers individual citizens to launch a “constitutional complaint” should they feel that the state has infringed their basic rights. Year after year thousands of citizens register a complaint against the constitution. However, the Court reserves the right to select from the mass of petitions submitted only those that can be expected to result in verdicts that point the way ahead in terms of the validity of basic rights. Ultimately every German court is obliged to submit a petition for actual assessment of the normative basis to the Constitutional Court should it consider a law to be un-constitutional. The Federal Constitutional Court holds a monopoly on interpretation of the constitution with regard to all jurisdiction.